Last day in Shanghai

Shanghai Travel Blog

Braving the heat on the last day, we
went to the Shanghai museum which had been highly recommended and was
free which was another point in it's favour! When we arrived we were
faced with a queue of people waiting outside in the blazing heat,
luckily we had packed our umbrella so joined the crowds and joined
the heat experts in shading ourselves with our umbrella. I actually
don't think it does much, I certainly felt just as hot with it up,
but you feel the part!

After the obligatory bag check and
scanners (gearing up for the Olympics) we went into the main hall and
headed to the sculpture section.

Children playing in a waterfall outside the museum

Most of the sculptures were
religious, various displays of the Buddha, in his differing forms. As
Buddhism novices we were unsure as to why Thai Buddhas look so
different to Chinese Buddhas (the more well known 'laughing Buddha').
Apparantly they are the same, just different countries depictions,
just like a painting of Jesus might look different in England than in
Africa. The Thai Buddha looks more 'Thai' and the Chinese looks more
'Chinese', although we've never seen a Chinese person that fat, so I
don't know what he was
eating!

There were several other rooms,
displaying porcelain and other Chinese artifacts. I was dissappointed
not to see any Willow pattern, although there were lots of plates,
vases etc in a similar style. I've looked at the Willow pattern
design with 3 classes in 2 different schools, and would have liked to
have seen some here.

Looking back over to the Bund

My favourite desplay however was of the
Olympic Games, ironically an exhibition shipped over from the British
Museum! I really wanted to take a photo of the iconic discus
sculpture but we weren't allowed. I even loitered around in the hall,
on the right side of the do not take photos inside sign to sneak a
picture down the corridor but the nasty guard stood in the way! We
also learnt some more gay trivia (always a bonus), that the older men
often 'celebrated their wins' with younger men which was apparantly a
common practice that wives allowed. I suspect that hundreds of years
ago, a really ugly old rich man couldn't find a nice young fellow to
celebrate with and banned anyone else from doing the same, deeming it
sick and wrong as he was so jealous. That's my opinion anyway!

In the evening we went under the river
to the area of Pudong, the financial side of Shanghai.

The strange Bund Tunnel

The guide book
recommended skipping the metro and going via the 'Bund Sightseeing
Tunnel' as it was an 'experience'. They weren't lying. We paid for
our ticket and got onto a little peoplemover style train and headed
into the tunnel. Lights starting whizzing all around us and a rather
ominous voiceover told us which sections we were going through, such
a *cue loud booming voice* 'deep red hell' and 'particle
displacement' (or something like that). At each section the light
display would change, and as we went though 'hell' there were some
strange floaty bodies that looked in at the windows..... I think it
was thought up during some sort of drug induced hallucination,
completely bizzarre!!

Our sleeper train the next day was far
nicer than the one to Shanghai. On the train to Beijing they don't
have the hard sleeper option, so we had a soft sleeper. We got
complementary slippers and a little toothbrush kit, very exciting! It
was the first time ever however that we were annoyed that a train was
going to arrive earlier than scheduled, as the guard came round at
just past 6am to wake everybody up.....